Bill Would Ease the Way to SOFR In a rare act of bipartisanship, the U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation intended to ease the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) transition for “markets, investors, and consumers” with what’s known as “tough legacy contracts” — incumbent agreements that will end without a designated reference rate. The… Read More >>
Remote Staffing Boosts Cloud’s Appeal: Q&A
(Cloud computing got a major boost during the pandemic when most staff members at financial services firms were compelled to work remotely, says Olga Orekhvo, chief operating officer (COO) at CompatibL Technologies. In fact, many financial services firms have embraced more than one cloud provider, which presents a new set of challenges. Orekhvo joined CompatibL… Read More >>
AWS Outage Halted FINRA Systems on Dec. 7
Key online systems of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) were unavailable on Tuesday, Dec. 7, because of an outage at cloud computing provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) that lasted about seven hours, according to alerts from the self-regulatory organization and Amazon. AWS has become a major cloud provider for financial services firms, particularly those… Read More >>
ICE Shakes Up NYSE’s Executive Team
December has always been full of surprises — good and bad — and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the exchanges company that owns the New York Stock Exchange, has announced a slew of executive surprises this week for NYSE and ICE. In a press release and an accompanying letter from Jeff Sprecher, founder, chairman, and CEO… Read More >>
BNY Mellon Buys Optimal’s Indexing for ‘Pershing X’
Other BNY Mellon Units to Get Direct Indexing Too The Pershing clearing and custody services business of BNY Mellon is acquiring Optimal Asset Management, a direct indexing solutions provider, and will offer Optimal’s capabilities to advisory clients within Pershing, and to institutional and retail clients within BNY Mellon’s Investment Management business. If the acquisition… Read More >>
Crypto to Face New Rules in 2022: Regulators
Heavy-hitter federal regulators say new rules are coming for cryptocurrencies, the new, mostly unregulated financial sector that competes with traditional banks without offering deposit insurance, the banks’ most important protection. And cryptography has been beset by high-profile scandals that have cost some would-be crypto millionaires their entire fortunes. As well, at a time of worsening… Read More >>
Key Groups Push to Start T+1 in 2024
The goalpost for the move by U.S. equities markets from T+2 to the shorter T+1 settlement cycle has shifted from 2023 to the first half of 2024 after an outreach to the industry revealed that more time was needed to revamp and test systems, workflows, and operations to facilitate this fundamental change to securities transaction processing…. Read More >>
North American Firms Could Face CSDR Penalties: Q&A
(Earlier this month, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. (DTCC), a post-trade market infrastructure systems and services provider, reported that its Exception Manager platform for trade exceptions would include an optional Central Securities Depositories Regulation or CSDR service. The DTCC is also launching a new link between the Exception Manager offering and its Central Trade… Read More >>
Wall Street’s New Cop Jolts Enforcement
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reports that it filed 434 new enforcement actions in fiscal year 2021. The SEC’s whistleblower program was “critical to these efforts and had a record-breaking year,” a commission statement notes. FY 2021 “marked the highest number of awards to both the number of individuals and in dollar amounts awarded,”… Read More >>
JPM Asset Management Taps JPM Securities Services
Following a two-year search, JPMorgan Asset Management (JPMAM) officials report that they will be outsourcing to JPMorgan’s Securities Services division an updated set of global operations that will encompass middle office services, collateral management, and risk analytics. The move means that there will be a definite swing to a more flexible model for services that… Read More >>
